Half Marathon Done, Next Up Paris

Zagan the motorhome’s still in stasis, sat in his storage spot shouldered by sleeping caravans. We’ve popped up to him from time to time, washing his seat covers, fitting a new skylight, cleaning the carpet and popping it back down after a summer’s hard floor, checking the batteries are charging and the fridge isn’t furring up. Somehow I’ve managed to avoid actually washing him mind you…

Give it a couple of days though and he’ll be rolling south. We’re booked into Camping de Paris for a few days, catching up with Australian friends Rose and Paul who we met at the end of their epic three year motorhome tour a few years back (their blog’s here). They’re over here to walk part of the Camino de Santiago for charity, and will stay in a chalet on the campsite before flying home. We’ve about three weeks planned in France in total, a quick trip for us lucky two, but we’re really looking forwards to it.

The site’s in the ACSI discount camping card scheme, so is only costing us roughly €20 a night, including electricity and local taxes, not bad for central-ish Paris! For once we’ve booked the site in advance, to be sure we can get in, and I had to contact the site to get the ACSI rate. There’s no option on the website to say you have the card, but they were quick to reply and I just needed to call someone in the Netherlands to pay (who spoke perfect English).

The campsite’s also (just) outside the Paris low emission zone (LEZ), so you don’t need a Crit’Air sticker to get in (you can read all about Crit’Air here). We’ve bought one anyway, as they’re only £4, and they’re technically needed for some large areas of France, although they’re only needed outside the centre of cities under extra-ordinary circumstances when the pollution levels are very high. It’s confusing stuff, and getting a sticker’s the simplest solution.  Like the German Umweltzone system, vehicles are issued a certain ‘level’ of sticker depending on how polluting they are. We have a level 4 Crit’Air sticker, which lets us enter the Paris LEZ if we accidentally drive in. Over time these LEZs will likely get more picky about who they let in, but for now even our 17 year old van can drive in the majority of ’em.

Apart from the Crit’Air sticker, we’re not doing much differently this time around:

Internet

We’re using a 12GB Three Mobile Pay as You Go Data SIM (about £28) for Internet access, which is enough data for us and the data’s valid for a full 12 months. We’ve just been in touch with Adam from motorhomewifi.com, and he’s pointed us to Vodafone’s 30 day rolling contract SIM – £30 a month for 50GB of roaming 4G internet. In terms of cost per GB, and network speed, that’s a much better deal than the Three SIM. But as we don’t use that much data in a month, and this is only a short trip, the Three deal’s more cost effective to us at the moment, but clearly Vodafone’s worth looking at if you want a high volume of data.

Money

For cash we’ll be using our CaxtonFX prepay card again, which allows fee-free withdrawals from ATMs, enabling us to carry relatively small amounts of money. The exchange rates it offers aren’t the best, but the card still works for us. For purchases we’ll use our Halifax Clarity credit card, which has no fee for foreign transactions. We’ve checked neither card will expire while we’re away, and as a final back-up have our current account card in case both other methods fail.

Pets

This will be the first time in 10 years we’re travelling outside the UK without Charlie, our dog, after he passed away in the Alps earlier this year. Taking him abroad wasn’t a big deal once he’d his pet passport and we knew how to get back into the UK, and we’re going to miss him all over again on this trip.  If you’re planning on taking a tour outside the UK with a pet, and don’t already have a pet passport, have a word with your vet ASAP. Although Brexit will **hopefully** make no difference to the pet passport scheme, the government’s just issued documents which indicate you need to start planning now if you want to travel abroad with a pet after March 2019, which doesn’t yet have a passport, just in case the UK leaves the EU without a deal and ends up being an unlisted third country (very unlikely, but possible it seems).

Places to Stay

As well as the ACSI campsites, as mentioned above, we’ll also be using the park4night and campercontact apps on our phones to find aires. We’ll be testing how accurate our old copy of the Camperstop Europe aires book is too! We probably won’t stop anywhere in the UK on this trip, but have the Canterbury motorhome aire as a back-up in case we fancy a stopover in the south.

Insurance

Our van’s still insured through Safeguard (disclosure: Safeguard sponsor this blog through advertising), which includes breakdown cover across Europe. We’ve also renewed our ADAC membership – the German version of the AA. Why? Well, they no longer allow new UK members, and we wanted to keep our membership going as they’ve a great reputation for rescuing folks in far flung places. It’s belt and braces for future trips, and because ADAC cover us, and not the van, we’re covered when we drive Ju’s Mum’s car here in the UK. In terms of travel insurance: well reminded! We knew we’d only be doing short (for us) trips this year, so we bought an annual policy with a 90 day limit for each trip, with the help of some meerkats! When we’re doing long trips, we’ve used a backpacker policy with Alpha Insurance.

OK, travel stuff aside, this is what we’ve been up to:

• We both ran the Robin Hood Half Marathon on Sunday. Ju knocked 30 minutes off her Marrakech time, and I knocked 20 minutes off mine. We’re getting fitter, woohoo! I’m booked onto the Zermatt July 2019 Ultra Marathon, which is 29 miles uphill (a vertical mile of climbing up to 3000-odd meters above sea level), and am gradually building up to it. Next up’s a 6 hour run around the woods in Northampton in December. Ju’s keeping her next goal close to her chest (nope, I don’t know what it is yet…)
• We’ve published the Motorhome Touring Handbook, which has all the info above in it and about 220 page more besides! The book’s kept us very busy; they’re easy enough to publish these days, but still hard to write.
• We’ve done some maintenance jobs on the house here in Kimberley, which took a few days and it feels good to have ’em done.
• We’re off up to Scotland in Zagan a couple of week’s after we’re back from France for a mate’s birthday and to nip around the NC500 (North Coast 500). That’s assuming the weather holds up. If it’s rubbish we might blast back south and hole up next to the fire here!
• And we’ve a vague plan to head off to Sri Lanka for Jan/Feb/Mar 2019, although we’re not 100% sure that’s what we want to do. One of the enormous advantages of this lifestyle’s flexibility, and we can leave it to the last minute to decide what we’ll do and where we’ll go, although flights **might** be cheaper to book far in advance, we don’t yet know.

Right. Best get some packing done! We’ve a trip to the hospital tomorrow with my dad for an op, which he’s not looking forwards to (and neither would I). Assuming that all goes OK we’ll be on a late night ferry on Thursday and will probably head for a free aire near Calais to get some sleep. There are also a couple of paid aires in Calais itself (one is €8 per 24 hours and the other €10), which we might end up in if we’re really tired or the crossing was rough.

We’ll send out a few blogs while we’re away, and try and seek out some new spots to write about. In the meantime, our friends Joanne and Craig are having a remarkable time touring Turkey at the moment – have a look see at ourbumble.com which has lots of cracking photos too.

Cheers, Jay